Here's a good place to expose the fairy tale tellers such as Janet Yellin, Barack Obama, and most every politician and professional economist in thrall to government in one way or another.
It is a daily Wall Street Journal feature reporting cash prices for about every basic item that folks buy and sell. They are not futures, not speculation about what a thing might be worth next month; they are cash-on-the-barrel-head wholesale prices representing actual sales, actual deliveries in return for a handful of Federal Reserve Cartoons.
Edible tallow was 39 cents a pound yesterday, nice white grease the same. Gold bullion at $1324.60 per troy ounce. A nice young chicken carcass, ready for your broiler, was $1.114 a pound.
And to get to life's basic necessities, lead solder traded hands at $1.31 a pound. (Which, for you non-reloaders, is about 7000 grains or roughly 35 200-grain semi-wadcutters for your 1911A1.)
This isn't pure lead. It is some sort of solder alloy, but that is beside the point because it is decidedly leadish and we're interested only in comparing real prices with government fairy tales, the chief of which are its "tame" inflation nonsense and Fed promises that it will continue to regulate its printing presses to max out inflation at 2 per cent.
Back to the WSJ chart. That lead sold one year ago yesterday for $1.22 a pound. Subtract and divide and discover that lead is up 7 per cent in 12 months.
I'm cherry picking only slightly. Grains are down substantially, for instance, but that probably reflects the decline of the ethanol-thug subsidies more than any real market force.
The chicken? Up about 6 per cent. Butter up 56 per cent. And let's not depress ourselves with pork and beef. If you're looking for stability and "affordability," I can recommend only the tallow and grease which are actually a penny or two cheaper over the year. And burlap, down from about 41 cents a yard to 39. Chow down. Get yourself a nice new wardrobe.
Ma Joad, in the box car East of Eden where survival was measured in the ounces of fried dough still possible: We got enough grease for two more days.
Two per cent inflation? It is Grimm, a yarn with all the credibility and integrity of Bush II in 2003, under the Abe Lincoln banner, about Iraq's glorious future as the Peoria of the Middle East: "Mission Accomplished."
Jun 23, 2014
See? Saw
"Hitachi,' I believe, transliterates as "rice hulls with a dragon-shit binder, carefully injection molded." But perhaps I err. Hope so.
The DeWalt 12-inch mitre saw buzzed off after two decades of hard use and nonexistent maintenance. I was sad, but she'd earned her rest after cutting untold thousands of kerfs in everything from from fine cocobolo to junk oak kindling, bark on, at an ownership cost of something like a buck-ten a month.
There was no identical replacement at any of the usual suspect retailers around here, so I hied me to Menards which was advertising an epitcanthicly enhanced $300 version on sale for $200. Wrote the check this morning, hauled her home, plugged her in, and made a few cuts before reading the instruction manual, just to prove my libertarian manhood..
The garish green appears identical to some day-glo sneakers I saw on a girl jogger yesterday, so maybe I'm at last riding the fashion wave.
She works fine and feels okay, even the laser beam that magically predicts the kerf center. I should not like that sort of modernistic gimcrackery. But, dammit, I do.
As to her ultimate place in my affections, ask me in 20 years.
The DeWalt 12-inch mitre saw buzzed off after two decades of hard use and nonexistent maintenance. I was sad, but she'd earned her rest after cutting untold thousands of kerfs in everything from from fine cocobolo to junk oak kindling, bark on, at an ownership cost of something like a buck-ten a month.
There was no identical replacement at any of the usual suspect retailers around here, so I hied me to Menards which was advertising an epitcanthicly enhanced $300 version on sale for $200. Wrote the check this morning, hauled her home, plugged her in, and made a few cuts before reading the instruction manual, just to prove my libertarian manhood..
The garish green appears identical to some day-glo sneakers I saw on a girl jogger yesterday, so maybe I'm at last riding the fashion wave.
She works fine and feels okay, even the laser beam that magically predicts the kerf center. I should not like that sort of modernistic gimcrackery. But, dammit, I do.
As to her ultimate place in my affections, ask me in 20 years.
Jun 20, 2014
Nautical Distractions (1)
Ahoy.
A personal event directs my thoughts back many years, to boot camp where a lad's exposure to sea stories begins. He learns almost immediately the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story. One begins with "Once upon a time," the other with "Listen you guys, this is no s--t."
A kernel of truth embellished with all the literary art forms makes up the best of the sea stories, satire, parody, mockery, (especially self mockery), mild fantasy, wish fulfillment, and so forth.
Literal minded people are too quick to scorn the sea tale as just so much bull s--t. Winfred Blevins* had it right even if in a different context. Referring to the tall tales of the Rocky Mountain fur trappers (about 1820-1845) he observed: "What was wanted here was not fact but entertainment." He also notes that the yarn is a form of journalism even though a detail here and there requires heavy discounting.
The young sailor is well advised to listen with patience and appreciation -- or the best approximation thereof he can muster -- even to the banal ones he's heard before. It will make him a better ship mate in the eyes of his fellows, and that is one of the pillars of a happy cruise.
Of course, he may absorb so much that he'll wind up as an aging blogger. Never mind. That's just another one of the perils of the sea.
---
*Give Your Heart to the Hawks ISBN 0-380 - 00694 -4, p. 76
A personal event directs my thoughts back many years, to boot camp where a lad's exposure to sea stories begins. He learns almost immediately the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story. One begins with "Once upon a time," the other with "Listen you guys, this is no s--t."
A kernel of truth embellished with all the literary art forms makes up the best of the sea stories, satire, parody, mockery, (especially self mockery), mild fantasy, wish fulfillment, and so forth.
Literal minded people are too quick to scorn the sea tale as just so much bull s--t. Winfred Blevins* had it right even if in a different context. Referring to the tall tales of the Rocky Mountain fur trappers (about 1820-1845) he observed: "What was wanted here was not fact but entertainment." He also notes that the yarn is a form of journalism even though a detail here and there requires heavy discounting.
The young sailor is well advised to listen with patience and appreciation -- or the best approximation thereof he can muster -- even to the banal ones he's heard before. It will make him a better ship mate in the eyes of his fellows, and that is one of the pillars of a happy cruise.
Of course, he may absorb so much that he'll wind up as an aging blogger. Never mind. That's just another one of the perils of the sea.
---
*Give Your Heart to the Hawks ISBN 0-380 - 00694 -4, p. 76
Jun 18, 2014
Another junk post -- Winchester 97 junk
Poor man that I am, when someone offers me a Winchester 97 for $25, I'll find a way. Maybe borrow a bicycle and go can collecting along the highway.
She's seen here somewhere between before and after. The masking tape that held her wood together is gone, along with some of its gummy residue. Some of the patina is missing. But she's still jammed open and will probably stay that way. I hate tearing down Model 97s.
If I got enough of the gunk from the oil-soaked chip and butt stock wrist, I'll epoxy them back together, reattach the wood, steel-wool the rest of the tape crap off, and offer her up as a "parts" gun or decorator. If the glue won't hold, I'll push her as one of the few Model 97 three-piece takedowns in existence. Or maybe a rawhide wrap. Add a few brass tacks and she becomes a genuine Injun gun.
It's something to do in my dedicated gun-tinkering time while I'm waiting for the Commander slide. If the nice folks at Caspian meet their promised schedule, it's due in three weeks.
---
Sure I know the old Corn Shucker's provenance, all the way from the night Private Alvin C. Blatnik (ret.) of Strawberry Point, Iowa, won her from Teddy Roosevelt in a five-card stud session at the 10th annual Rough Riders reunion. But you guys wouldn't be interested.
She's seen here somewhere between before and after. The masking tape that held her wood together is gone, along with some of its gummy residue. Some of the patina is missing. But she's still jammed open and will probably stay that way. I hate tearing down Model 97s.
If I got enough of the gunk from the oil-soaked chip and butt stock wrist, I'll epoxy them back together, reattach the wood, steel-wool the rest of the tape crap off, and offer her up as a "parts" gun or decorator. If the glue won't hold, I'll push her as one of the few Model 97 three-piece takedowns in existence. Or maybe a rawhide wrap. Add a few brass tacks and she becomes a genuine Injun gun.
It's something to do in my dedicated gun-tinkering time while I'm waiting for the Commander slide. If the nice folks at Caspian meet their promised schedule, it's due in three weeks.
---
Sure I know the old Corn Shucker's provenance, all the way from the night Private Alvin C. Blatnik (ret.) of Strawberry Point, Iowa, won her from Teddy Roosevelt in a five-card stud session at the 10th annual Rough Riders reunion. But you guys wouldn't be interested.
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